When online bank Mettle approached us for a custom typeface, our first step was to look beyond the brief and understand their values. The banking sector requires careful consideration, but as part of NatWest Group – which ranks highly in Tortoise Media's Responsibility100 Index for sustainability and ethical practices – Mettle aligned with our own standards.
Assured by their commitment to responsible banking, we created something distinctive: Mettle Slab, a bold typeface that brings personality to financial services without compromising trust.
The design comes in two versions – a traditional cut that maintains authority, and an experimental version that randomly introduces hand-drawn characters through OpenType features, adding a human touch to digital banking.
For each letter in the hand-drawn set, we created multiple variations that are selected at random, ensuring the typography feels naturally imperfect rather than mechanically repetitive.
Rogue Oat needed to stand out in the crowded alternative milk market, where shelf presence can make or break a startup. Working within startup budget constraints, we focused our efforts on creating a bold, custom typeface that could carry the weight of their entire brand identity.
We designed 'bounce' and 'shadow' versions of the typeface to add extra expression and energy. This typographic toolkit gave them both an ownable asset and the versatility to grow their visual identity alongside their business.
The Institute, a new home for Ravensbourne's post-graduate courses, sits within London's Design District on Greenwich Peninsula. The building's bold architectural grid became our inspiration for a complete visual system, culminating in a custom monospaced typeface.
The bespoke font translates the building's structural rhythm into typography, where each character occupies an identical space within a strict grid system. The result is more than just a typeface – it's an architectural principle transformed into a working design tool that expresses the Institute's commitment to systematic thinking and creative precision.
Created in 2008 for a contemporary interiors shop, this display typeface draws inspiration from the revolutionary modular letterform experiments of the Bauhaus, particularly Joseph Albers' stencil-based alphabets of the 1920s.
By embracing these fundamental geometric principles, we created a typeface that speaks to both modernist heritage and contemporary design sensibilities. Its deliberately reduced forms – built from simple circles and rectangles – give it a timeless quality that continues to feel fresh more than a decade and a half later.
This lasting relevance mirrors The Lollipop Shoppe's own careful curation of classic design pieces, proving that good design, whether in furniture or typography, transcends trends.
The typeface allowed The Lollipop Shoppe to maintain a consistent brand presence across all touchpoints without relying on heavy-handed logo placement – price tags, signage, and communications all carry the brand's DNA through the typography.
